


By This Still Hearth, Among These Barren Crags

by helva2260



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hints of "The Empty House", Inspired by Poetry, Kink Meme, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, Reunion!fic, Tennyson Made Me Do It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helva2260/pseuds/helva2260
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from a post-Sherlock life. In which John tries to make sense of life, tries to move on with life, and then finally, succeeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By This Still Hearth, Among These Barren Crags

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/12432.html?thread=64634768#t64634768) on the kink meme – OP, I’m so sorry that it’s taken so long (over two years!) to write. I’m afraid that I got irretrievably stuck on one scene, eventually decided the 2nd series was close enough that I might as well wait to see how they wrote Reichenbach, so that I could write John’s reaction better – and immediately found that several other scenes needed to be rewritten! Worse yet, even when those were fixed, I found that I was still stuck on the same scene that I had been before…
> 
> Now that it’s (finally!) finished, I hope it’s at least something close to what you wanted.
> 
> Acknowledgements go to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, for his poem Ulysses, from which the title and all poetry quotations in this story were taken. It’s long been a favourite poem of mine.
> 
> Also, to tau_sigma, the bestest beta in the world: thank you for being a sounding-board and generally putting up with me and my silliness. Especially when I sometimes insist on doing things the grammatically incorrect way, merely because it sounds better in my head!

> _For always roaming with a hungry heart_  
>  _Much have I seen and known; cities of men_  
>  _And manners, climates, councils, governments,_  
>  _Myself not least, but honoured of them all;_  
>  _And drunk delight of battle with my peers…_

John found the paperback—cream and black, with a sepia-print portrait of the author—under Sherlock’s pillow whilst stripping the linens for washing. An equally well-thumbed copy of Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations” peeked out of the half-closed drawer of his bedside table, but that wasn’t so much of a surprise; John had long thought Sherlock had something of the Stoic about him. He hadn’t realised that Sherlock might enjoy poetry, however, and so the incongruity of finding a collection of Tennyson in his bedroom fascinated him. What more was there to discover about Sherlock that he had never had the chance to learn?

He should ignore it and carry on with the cleaning, he knew, even if he couldn’t yet take that one step further and consider what should be done with Sherlock’s belongings. The room might be habitually neat, but the linens were overdue for changing and all the flat surfaces were becoming flocked with dust.

Instead he picked the book up, and sat back on his heels, back braced against the side of the bed. He flicked carefully through the book, feeling an uncharacteristic tentativeness as he did so. It wasn’t as though he were invading Sherlock’s space, and yet…

There was an intimacy in discovering what Sherlock had enjoyed reading in his rare moments of non-bored leisure, and in seeing the evidence of his thought processes in action. Here and there John found scraps of paper littered amongst the pages, comments on the text scrawled across them in Sherlock’s distinctively spiky hand. A post-it note, an old supermarket receipt, a couple of railway tickets, a torn-off scrap of a gas bill. Sherlock’s thoughts recorded in indelible ink on the ephemera of everyday life. 

It was oddly comforting to have this reminder of Sherlock’s solid humanity laid out in front of him, John reflected, but also disquieting. Sherlock had always been a private man in many ways, and this seemed like an invasion of that privacy. It made him wonder…too much.

What had happened? The thought ran through his mind again, as it had so many other times since...

Here in his bedroom, Sherlock's presence was sure and certain, just as it had always been. Here there was a clarity to everything; every object had a purpose, every item of clothing was part of a larger plan. The collective derangement of the world had no place in this room, left wholly unaffected by the past fortnight's turmoil.

And yet, the odd thing was that Sherlock had never cared about the opinions of people he didn't know. So why would he care enough now to...?

Until the last few days, when the shape of Moriarty's web of rumours and lies had become clear, he'd seemed almost hungry for the challenge. Two minds, equal and opposite, pitted against each other in the battle of the century. How could he—who in childhood wanted to be a pirate, of all the romantic notions!—have resisted that siren call? And then the crippling realisation that Moriarty had never planned to fight on equal terms. No heroic duel for glory here; just the grim reality of friend turning against friend and brother against brother, and Moriarty making the innocent public dance to his command and bring down Sherlock Holmes in the guise of an angry mob.

And yet, even in the last few hours, at Bart's, his spirit had been rising again beneath the still planes of his face, as he turned his mind to tactics. John could see it in his mind's eye: caught in the eye of the storm, Sherlock's ill-concealed helplessness had gradually transmuted into the silence of waiting and the calm of consideration. 

So what happened?

What happened after John left?

What happened before John got back to find... To see...?

John felt as though the walls were closing in on him. The thought of it was all too vivid, too raw.

Hot grief ran through him like a poker, and he closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, a fat teardrop was soaking into the page, swelling the fibres and leaving a ripple of expanded paper in its wake.

He closed the book.

> _How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  
>  To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!  
>  As though to breathe were life._

John endured. The Sherlock-shaped hole in his life was always there, silence where there should have been a constant storm of activity and emotion buffeting him around.

Without a flatmate or the distraction of cases and odd hours, John found himself in need of regular hours rather than a locum’s flexibility. It was … alright. Nothing _wrong_ with it. A little dull maybe, if John were pushed on the matter. Most people didn’t though, seemingly only too eager to assume he’d be glad of a secure job in general practice. He didn’t disabuse them of the thought.

The truth was, his limp had returned; the old ghost of an injury that never was, marking an injury that had no wound.

> _And this grey spirit yearning in desire  
>  To follow knowledge like a sinking star,  
>  Beyond the utmost bound of human thought._

A year comes and goes, then two; it's nearly three, now.

He meets up with Lestrade and his team at the pub in the last week of September, and catches up on all the gossip while they’re waiting for the newest plain-clothes recruit to appear with the first round of drinks.

It’s an irregular but not uncommon occurrence, begun whilst Sherlock was still alive and infuriating people on a frequent basis. Lestrade had apparently thought John might want a sympathetic ear to moan to occasionally, and had somehow managed to keep Donovan from being too gleeful in her “I told you so”s on the rare occasions that John did indulge in such things.

For the most part, John had been fascinated to find that as long as Sherlock was present only in memory, the Met officers seemed to derive a certain pride from surviving his whirlwind presence. It wasn’t uncommon to find Lestrade and other DIs who’d had the bad luck to have a Holmes encounter that month, swapping stories about his prowess and one-upping each other over his antics. His insults were bandied around with good humour, his virtuoso leaps of logic marvelled at (and more than once, John noticed, covertly jotted down for later thought) and his rare compliments endlessly boasted about.

In the immediate and awful aftermath of Sherlock’s death, there was no meeting up with anyone from the Met. It was three months before John could stand any amount of time in a room with Greg, even, though he knew full well that the DI had been almost as trapped by circumstance as Sherlock himself.

But time had passed. Slowly the fog of Moriarty’s plots had started to recede, and the worst part of John’s bitterness began to ebb away as Sherlock’s reputation was pieced back together.

It helped that somehow the predicted threat of a flood of retrials and prisoners’ appeals failed to materialise—and John wondered if he could see the ghost of Mycroft’s hand in that—after a Police Complaints Commission inquiry quietly validated Sherlock’s presence in numerous DIs’ investigations. Gradually, John reacquainted himself with more of the Scotland Yard contingent, and found himself still fond of them.

Now though, the news is that Sally Donovan is waiting to hear if the promotions board will boost her to Inspector this time around; that SCO19 nearly buggered up one of DI Gregson’s drug busts with the mother of all communications errors (namely, sending the Armed Response Unit to meet up with his team two hours later than planned, so that the task force had to scramble for position and hope their targeted dealers weren’t doing too much curtain-twitching); that Greg is thoroughly frustrated by a murder with possible gambling connections that refuses to give up its secrets (apparently the forensics lab has a three-month backlog for some of the necessary tests, and the ballistics results that _have_ come through aren’t making any sense). In amongst the catching up, the recruit gets back from the bar and John accepts his beer with a nod and a grin.

It turns out, as the evening progresses, that it’s just past Police Memorial Day, and his friends are in reflective mood. As the level of alcohol in their glasses goes down, the conversation turns to fond remembrances.

Sally donates a story about the old mentor who recommended her for CID, who was later medically retired from the force after being stuck with a dirty needle during a botched arrest. Greg counters with the memory of the first time he met Sherlock Holmes, and the (as he thought then) ridiculous flight of fancy that the young man had dreamt up to explain why he was in a suspect’s bathroom. Dimmock has a tale of someone he knew at Hendon, who died in a car crash caused by a drunken teenager in the speeding car they were chasing. Other stories come and go, some shocking in their rawness, others softened by time.

John lets himself float along with the bittersweet flood of whimsy, and contributes some of Sherlock’s more vulnerable moments (the way he was surprised that John appreciated his insight; the frozen moments when he realised he wasn’t fast enough or clever enough to save someone, and the way he’d redouble his efforts afterwards, all the while pretending it was solely a matter of professional pride).

They drink to absent friends.

> _Though much is taken, much abides; and though  
>  We are not now that strength which in old days  
>  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;_

It’s a bad day in the clinic. Well, an average day really, and that’s the problem. A string of ( _boring… dull… pedestrian…_ the Sherlock of his imagination whispers) average patients with average complaints, and John’s hand is shaking hard enough to give him trouble signing his name to the prescriptions. Another day to get through. Another night to get through after that.

The next patient—a Mr Basil Escott, retired naval captain—has limped through from the waiting room and John gets ready to hear yet another average tale of everyday woe. He wonders sometimes what Sherlock would make of him now: just another urban GP in an unremarkable job; more grey, more worn-out, with his blasted psychosomatic weaknesses worse than ever.

And then the elderly man with a stoop and a gouty foot straightens to his full height and looks at John in a familiar, soul-piercing manner, and John feels the blood drain from his extremities.

He gropes blindly for his chair and drops into it gracelessly, trying to remember how to breathe. His eyes never leave the familiar stranger. Never blink. He swallows around a sudden lump in his throat that feels the size of a grapefruit, and as though from a very great distance, hears his name in Sherlock Holmes’ unmistakeable voice for the first time in three years.

“John? John! Damn it, I told Mycroft this was a stupid idea. It’s not as though Moran doesn’t already know I’m back in town!”

And just like that, John starts to giggle.

There’s danger in the offing, no doubt, or Sherlock would never have returned (would never have left, more to the point). There’s shouting and hurt feelings to wade through in the near future—a sense of betrayal and abandonment on his side certainly, and he’s sure Sherlock himself has some mixed feelings about his experiences to relate—but after that, John knows, they’re going to make sure everything works out okay.

> _One equal temper of heroic hearts,  
>  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  
>  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield._

There is a kindled fire in Sherlock’s eyes as he looks up from the screen of his phone to meet John’s gaze. He grins, wild and free, and oh so joyful that it makes John’s heart clench with matching emotion.

“Lestrade,” he says, waving the phone for emphasis. “Wants our opinion on a case.”

He turns, coat swirling out behind him, and heads for the stairs, confident as always that John Watson will be right behind him. As always, he’s right. Following the easy lope of his friend and colleague with his eyes, John smiles. He breathes deep and feels his leg hold true, strong and steady underneath him as he starts to run.

“Come on, John—don't dawdle!” He hears from the open front door as he races to catch up. “The game is on!”

\--end--


End file.
